Tag Archives: Jesus

So, here I am with my lists of reads from June. You’ll note the absence of most issues related to whatever is the most important thing of the day in N-America. That’s probably intentional…
The picture for this month is Drosera rotundifolia, a carnivorous plant growing wild here in Kessel, Belgium. Native but slightly exotic nonetheless…

Sometimes reality goes beyond sci-fi: I never though there’d be a day I’d just link to the The new Papal encyclical on my blog, but it is very interesting and some of the things the Pope says are much-needed in this world!
I don’t understand why most people are only focussing on the issue of climate change while there’s a lot of issues tackled in there. (See also this commectary from Eric at the jawbone of an ass)

I think I said that for the first time earlier this month when I received an email for coldplay being in a musical version of ‘game of thrones’. And I’ve been saying it several times since. The last time was yesterday, when reading about the ‘Charlie Charlie challenge’. (google is your friend, I’m not going to link it!). I was even in the Flemish newspapers in my own language! A viral kids game involving pencils and summoning Charlie the Mexican demon….

Wait, what was that last one?

Well, it seems like the current hype among teenagers on the internet is ‘Charlie Charlie challenge’, a ‘game’ consisting of summoning some entity called ‘Charlie’ (said to be a Mexican demon) using something that can best be described as a very primitive spirit board consisting of 4 words scribbled on a paper, and 2 pencils.

Yes you read that correctly: a ‘Mexican demon’ called ‘Charlie’ (not even Carlos) is called upon through a rudimentary ouija-board-like device that anyone can make in 2 seconds. Just write rite yes, ye, no no on the 4 corners of a piece of paper and let 2 pencils balance on each other and you’re ready to contact said entity. And that’s going viral as a game among teenagers…

Oh, and if you’re too 2015 to use prehistoric means as paper and pencils you can buy an app for it too. (Because using your phone as a portal to the demonic does not sound at all like the plot for a bad supernatural thriller?°)

Like I said, I’m so not ready for the ’10’s…

Let’s not go into the dumb name. (Would a ‘Mexican demon’ not rather have a name in Spanish, or Nahuatl some local language?) Because that’s too dumb to react too.

There’s more interesting questions. It seems impossible to find the origin of this stuff (will it turn out to be a viral marketing campaign?) so some things about it are not that clear.

The question why people think it a good idea to summon ‘Mexican demons’ named Charlie is probably one that is not asked by everyone, but isn’t a very bad question either. (hint: it might not at all be a good idea…) But then again teenage hypes on the internet can be pretty bad ideas, and facebook drinking games are not harmless either.

One of the things that I found a while ago when reading up on the occult is that a lot of occultists (and other people that are seen as ‘into the occult’ by Christians who have an enormous fear of such things) will also warn against the use of ouija-boards, or about summoning spirits and entities without knowing what the hell you’re messing with…

(I don’t think I need to quote bible versions here to provide ‘proof’ for Christians that summoning demons or spirits might be a bad idea. You’ve all seen those before probably and google is still your friend…)

So, the big question: what’s on the other side of the line, if there’s anything at all (results will probably vary)?

Sometimes it will be just gravity and chance probably.
But at least from some videos (not linking, watch at your own risk. And don’t get infected by stupidity…) it seems that the Charlie Charlie challenge might actually in some instances work to contact ‘something’ that answers questions. And that also plagues people with some minor paranormal bullying if you don’t say goodbye properly to close the connection. Yes, evidently, ancient Mexican demons want their customers to be polite…
(Or maybe it’s just better to break off the connection and don’t keep the line open after connecting a paranormal entity? If you can completely get rid of it after inviting it that is…)

So what is it that shows up for a game of ‘je suis Charlie’ when the invited guest actually shows up?

Like I said before, I expect the results to be varied. Is there an actual demon behind it with a cunning plan to lure dumb teenagers to the caverns of hell with a lot of minions called Charlie? I don’t know. Sounds a bit too conspiracy-ish to me actually. But who knows what kind of evil plot there is behind this.. (Like a marketing strategy or so. Mammon might be the most dangerous demon for the state of the planet anyway currently…)

Is it any nearby entity that can use the occasion? Not a very good idea either then… Don’t open portals to the spiritual dimension to invite things you don’t know that clearly operate under a false identity, when you don’t even know what you’re doing. (Even a bit of an occultist would probably learn some protection and banishment spells before doing such a thing…*).

Or was there initially nothing but did the game call Charlie into existence as a thoughtform-being? (In which case he might be a quite powerful egregore by now, and probably a bit bored from answering dumb questions from teenagers all the time.)

I have no intention to find out actually. I just want the ’10’s to be over as soon as possible at the moment… And the answer to my question in the title is probably clear by now…

Simply said: NO!

Btw, when I looked for how people who are more into the occult react to the whole thing,they generally have the same reactions as I had. they or laugh at the idea of a Mexican demon called ‘Charlie’, they or think a thoughtform might be created, or suggest that any stray spirit will use the occasion to play… No-one seems very enthusiastic about this game…
(No, the bogus idea that all people who are into the occult are part of a worldwide Satanic conspiracy against Christianity is actually nonsense. )

And this brings me to my last point: if indeed, as some say, occultism is on the rise in Western cultures, then there are 2 opposing things we should avoid at all cost. (I’m speaking to both my Christian audience and all the others here)
The first one is to laugh it all away from a naturalist/materialist perspective². The second one is the classical ‘demons of the gaps’ approach, in which everything that is even remotely seen as ‘occult’ or even paranormal is attributed to ‘demons’, and all people who engage in such things pushed away as dangerous devil-worshippers. Neither of both is very helpful for different reasons, and we will need a more nuanced approach, both in communication with those who are engaged in the occult as in approaching the ‘invisible’ itself.

What do you think?

Bram

° The idea of using iphone-apps to connect to the spirit world and make connections to demons (Mexican or not) does have some terrifying implications that I won’t venture into here. It’s too much the stuff of anime and comics…

* Sending demons away in the name of Jesus Christ is the most simple Christian ‘banishing ritual’ which is quite effective if you stand in the Power of Jesus. If you are not a Christian or do not live connected to the Living Christ, using the name of Christ just as a spell is not a good idea, it might result in the spirit answering “Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?” and still bothering you, as happened to the sons of Sceva in acts 15..

² Atheism as a paradigm, combined a strond disbelief in the supernatural, can indeed work as a medium-strong shield to not encounter anything supernatural/paranormal, just as believing in it does surely help to encounter it. But don’t count on that to always work… (see also this post)
Quite chaos magick anyway to use a paradigm and the power of belief to manifest it…

I seem very busy at the moment, with ideas in my head that don’t get the chance to be converted into blogposts. But here is my list of interesting links elsewhere for April 2015 nonetheless…

(Picture is from my new DeviantArt, where I put some of my very unprofessional photographs from time to time now… And yes, I do like Sepia a lot!)

Five Things Christianity Can Learn From Buddhism by Christian Piatt. Not that I agree with everything (I don’t even think I really understand the exact Buddhist meaning of ‘ego’ -I don’t think many Christians do- although I disagree with ‘the self is an illusion, but Western Christianity is way too ego-driven sometimes!)

The blogpost Am I really a Lesbian? at the spiritual apocalypse blog. Written by a lesbian woman married to another woman, but a completely different angle than a lot of things I regularly read. (Much more Christlike if you ask me)

Another sign that Christians need to get away from both materialist reductionism on one hand and weird sensational supernaturalism on the other hand and acknowledge the spiritual world in a more humble and dare I say, rational way: Peter Wagner and Mt Everest’s Queen of Heaven: Towards Understanding Groups Like the ARC (at the Wartburg Watch) I can remember Wagner having influennce on the Charismatic circles, and I do know these sorts of ‘spiritual mapping’, but this is just dangerous nonsense which has nothing to do with Jesus or the bible. Why so some want to see demons an the like eveyrwhere where they aren’t (without noticing them where they actually are), completely sidetracking God and Jesus in the process??

Faith in the system, or faith in Jesus? by Chaplain mike at internetmonk with a nice picture of Charles Darwin himself: “I was impressed anew at how evangelical Christianity comes across as faith in a system rather than faith in the person of Jesus Christ.”
(Which reminds me for some reason of the Omian religion in Terry Prachett’s ‘small gods)

I do like things that connect with global Christianity. So I want to learn this Song heard around the world , which I don’t know but is based on a verse I have been trying to write a song from too, although I’ve never finished it.

Just interpret this however you want: Female chimps making, wielding spears . Maybe weapons were invented by women after all from an evolutionary POV. No idea what this would mean to romantic feminists who say men disrupted the balance…

In this post we proceed our meditative explorations on 1 Corinthians 13, Paul’s well-known ‘love chapter’. This is always the first thing I think about when people say ‘Paul isn’t important’ for whatever kind of reason. I can’t believe that anyone would want a bible without 1 Corinthians 13, and Gods message to mankind that was brought by Jesus is not complete without an understanding of what Paul is saying here.

Let’s just read the next part slowly:

Love never ends.
But if there are prophecies,
they will be set aside;
if there are tongues,
they will cease;
if there is knowledge,
it will be set aside.
For we know in part,
and we prophesy in part,
but when what is perfect comes,
the partial will be set aside.

This is a well-known piece of the bible, not only used for meditation but also for fierce theological discussions.
Some have used this piece for the defence of cessationism, which is the idea that the supernatural works of the Spirit have ceased after the time of the apostles. I don’t see how one could make that exegesis without having to conclude that not only speaking in tongues and prophecies, but knowledge itself would have ceased. And knowledge is quite important to most cessationists I’ve met. Also in this interpretation it seems that one has to conclude that the ‘perfect’ that will come is the canon of the bible. I really can’t see that work at all…

No, the piece is just noting the fallibleness of everything in this fallen world, in contrast with the love this chapter is speaking about. You don’t have to be postmodern to have a very humble epistemology! Just reading 1 Corinthians 1′ may suffice…
Prophecies, tongues and knowledge are incomplete in this age, but they will be perfected in the next age, when the Kingdom of God comes. So the last verse here really is eschatological.

Read the piece again. Let every detail sink in.

Everything is incomplete in this world. Our religious things as well as the non-religious, and we are just fallible humans.

One day there will be a perfection of Creation, but we won’t see it in this lifetime… And then the partial, the incomplete will be set aside.

Love will be completed then… We can not even start to understand what that might mean, but it surely will be good!

We continue with my meditations on 1 Cor 13, Pauls love chapter. See also part I and II.

The next verse is the last of the first part of this chapter, and goes on in the same way as verse 1 and 2 which we’ve already read:

If I give away everything I own,
and if I give over my body
in order to boast,
but do not have love,
I receive no benefit.

(I recommend you to read this several times and think about it in all its implications and everything else that comes up when you read this. Asking the Holy Spirit for guidance before you do this is not a bad idea either.)

Paul still talks about all we can have and do without having love. This time he says we can sacrifice all we have including our own body, but without love we will not benefit from it.

The interesting thing is that when we compare the 3 first verses, the first verse says that without love we will just be meaningless, the second verse says that we are nothing, and the third verse says we won’t get any benefit. We can’t bypass love as a Christian. Not with knowledge, nor with strong faith, nor with any sacrifice we could make.

In medieval times we did have places called ‘godshuizen’ (god-houses) in this part of Europe, in which poor people were given housing and food. Sounds very good, but in fact the whole idea was that the (rich) people who founded such things just did it because they wanted to be sure they would go to heaven after they died. If this was indeed the reason why they built those houses and took care of the poor without really caring for them, we can doubt that it did really work. Paul here seems to assume otherwise…

Without love we are nothing!

There is some ambiguity in the original meaning of the second part, so some translations speak about giving over the body in order to boast, while others speaking in giving over the body to be burned, but the principle stays the same. Modern people don’t bother much with giving up their body anyway, so I don’t know if this particular sentence is that relevant for us. We do seem to revere our body more than that we are willing to sacrifice it.

But what Paul says here is very important. We can give and sacrifice everything we have and more, if it isn’t out of love (or at least creates love in us in the process), it will not do any good to us.

I must think of one more thing here: Jesus quoting the prophet Hosea to the pharisees in saying “Go and learn what this saying means: ‘I want mercy and not sacrifice.’” (Matthew 9:13). Let that sink in, here is the Living bible version:

‘It isn’t your sacrifices and your gifts I want—I want you to be merciful.’

We need to be merciful. We need to be loving. Sacrifices of any kind are meaningless without love…

Without love nothing can ever mean anything at all…

So what is love? What characteristics does it have? That’s something for next time. (you can cheat by opening your bible though…)

How would the world look if all who call themselves ‘Christians’ and affirm that Jesus is Lord would take verses like the next ones foundational to their every-day life and to every decision?

How would the world have looked if people who claimed to be ‘Christian emperors’ or kings over ‘Christian countries’ filled with ‘Christian people’ would have meditated on verses like these every morning and did everything to let the Spirit transform them in such a way that this was the ‘normal’ for everyone?

Why, for those who dare to call ourselves Christians, is this so often not the ‘normal’, but do we derive our ‘normal’ from the fallen world around us because we need to be ‘realistic’? Don’t we believe that the Kingdom of God is a reality that will stay when this reality has faded?

Don’t we have to stick to what’s more real? Isn’t our world just a ghost compared to what is to come, and is the way of life laid out in these verses more real than our world now in a sense, even though its hard for us to see this and to align ourselves with the coming Kingdom.

Luke 6
27 “But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 To the person who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other as well, and from the person who takes away your coat, do not withhold your tunic either. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and do not ask for your possessions back from the person who takes them away. 31 Treat others in the same way that you would want them to treat you.

32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you hope to be repaid, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, so that they may be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to ungrateful and evil people. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

Are we even among ‘those who are listening’ that are addressed here?

It is said elsewhere that we will be known by our love as Christians. I must say I don’t always see that. I do see a lot of seminars in Christianity, about leadership and being a good Christian man and be victorious in Christ and whatever. Where are the seminars that help us find ways together to love our enemies, give to those who ask, resisting violence with love and not hate? Why don’t we do everything in our might to grow into what is described by Jesus here?

I know want to be sure as protestants that we are ‘not saved by our works’. But isn’t the goal to be the sort of people that love God and our neigbor with everything that we are? The kind of people that would populate heaven (or the new Earth), the kind of people that are at home in a place were all evil is taken away?

Are we different as Christians? Are we known as Christians because we are ‘kind to ungrateful and evil people’? Are we known to be merciful because we believe that Our Father is merciful?

Galatians 5
13 For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity to indulge your flesh, but through love serve one another. 14 For the whole law can be summed up in a single commandment, namely, “You must love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 However, if you continually bite and devour one another, beware that you are not consumed by one another. 16 But I say, live by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh. 17 For the flesh has desires that are opposed to the Spirit, and the Spirit has desires that are opposed to the flesh, for these are in opposition to each other, so that you cannot do what you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, depravity, 20 idolatry, sorcery, hostilities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish rivalries, dissensions, factions, 21 envying, murder, drunkenness, carousing, and similar things. I am warning you, as I had warned you before: Those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God!

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Now those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also behave in accordance with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, being jealous of one another.

How many of the ‘works of the flesh’ are not present in modern Christianity, even apart from the hidden sexual sin and horrible abuse that’s going on. Things like “hostilities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish rivalries, dissensions, factions and envying” for example, can sometimes be on the foreground without anyone even noticing them. And they seem to have been since the early councils…

Note also that the freedom spoken about in Galatians 5:13 is the opposite of what our modern individualist sense of freedom (especially in the way some Americans are obsessed with it). We have the freedom not to indulge in our own longings but to serve the other in love!

Why are we as Christian so often even worse than the ‘sinner and tax collectors’ Jesus talks about? why don’t we assume it normal to go beyond this and really love our fellow humans, whether they are our friends of enemies, so people see Gods love through us?
Why are we as Christians so often distracted with stuff that go against the words of Jesus here, or are very clearly in Paul’s list of ‘works of the flesh’.

I can ask myself, but it would be very different if I as a Christian had always had examples of people living like this around me and finding it as normal as Jesus and Paul and the first church did… The world indeed would be very different if all Christians would find what is described in those 2 bible passages as normative and reality-shaping.

These verses could be normative and reality-shaping for Christians.

These verses SHOULD be normative and reality-shaping for all of us Christians…

Can we please please please take this stuff more serious as Christians? This broken world needs it.

I know I’ve not been very active lately here on this blog. I’m wrestling with some stuff in and outside of my head -it’s not because it’s in my head that it isn’t real…- and though I do have a lot of unfinished posts on various subjects that will hopefully be finished and posted one day although a lot of them might see the light, I’m quite unsure about what to write at the moment. This post is another impulsive train of thought that just needed to be written down, and it does most probably fit somewhere in my demodersiation-project.

As some people know already, I’m an enthusiastic reader of fantasy and scifi and likewise books, so after re-reading some Narnia, LOTR, and a few Terry Prachett books late last year I’m currently (re)reading Ursula Le Guins Earthsea series. I do say (re)reading because I’ve only been reading the first 4 ones before, and now I’ve also reading the collection of short stories called ‘tales from Earthsea’, and the last novel ‘the other wind’. It’s both interesting and challenging to me that the worldview in those books is sometimes much further away from mine. LOTR, Narnia, and even Harry Potter (indeed, Harry Potter) do have a pretty Christian background-worldview, while Earthsea seems to have some taoist and pagan (Native American?) concepts incorporated that are further away from my own thinking, with sometimes concepts and philosophies that I can’t agree with, but still very interesting to think about.

For this post there is just one idea I want to touch upon, which is the background behind the magic in Earthsea but also interesting outside of that context: the power of the old speach, which is the language of the making of the world. For those unfamiliar with the books: the world of Earthsea is created by some creator being name Segoy, more specifically it is called into being using that ‘true speech’. (There is a parallel with Christian thought here, but also differences: the world is called into being by the word of a creator as in genesis, though not ex nihilo, nor is the creator very active in the world anymore. So maybe there’ a more deist touch here even…) Wizards in Earthsea still use this very language of old speech since it is very powerful, if you do know the ‘real name’ of something (or someone) you have power over it. It is sort of the language underneath the universe of Earthsea.

Now outside of those books, the idea is still a very interesting one, and, dare I say, important one: If you know the language of creation, the language by which the world was made, and can speak it, you have power over the world.

I don’t think that true name magic is very original, nor do I expect Le Guin to claim that it is a new idea. Ideas like this do exist in a lot of cultures and more ‘magical’ thought (it’s behind the idea of most ‘spells’), but in a way the same idea also lies underneath modern science. We just don’t expect that language by which the world is made to be an actual language with words.

Let me explain what I mean with that: We modern people describe the world in formula and theories, looking for the ‘true name’ of things in the abstract language of mathematical equations and weird symbols, so we can not just explain the world around us, but also have power over it. We can visualise how an atom looks, and split it, either to make energy and electricity, or to make one of the most abominable weapons ever. We can unravel the language of DNA, and not just to find out how certain characteristics are coded in our genes, but also to alter organisms.

If you learn the language of the making of the universe, which is the same language the universe still speaks, you sometimes can control it. That’s one of the reasons why a lot of scientists are still looking for the ultimate formula that describes everything. We want to unravel the code in which the universe is programmed, so we can be able to re-program it in our own taste… Which is still the same goal that any serious magician had. I’ve said before that science and magic are like twins in a way.

And yes, it is true that to do anything at all, you need to understand the way the world works, learn the language, and submit to it. It is in submission to the rules of the language of the world that we can gain power over it, not just by writing symbols on a board. By submitting to the rules of the grammar of creation we can make the word submit. And as humans we do want this to be absolute. But the question here is ‘can we?’? I do find the modern idea that the universe can be completely understood ‘rationally’ in our terms, in our language and abstract system, to be naive hubris at least.

Now, science is only one attempt to try this, and one that is very useful in one area (the visible, material part of the world), but there are more dialects of the true language of the universe that the universe speaks, and though magic might not be in vogue in the high places nowadays (although our technology can be more evil than a lot of dark magic), there are working systems of magic that have found bits of the language to the universe useful to exercise power. (Chaos magic can be quite effective in the right (?) hands I think for example, if we get outside of the realm of more traditional occult magic(k) )

Let me note here that religion can probably be viewed in similar ways, but with a big difference: the ‘control’ part on our side should be absent for healthy religion, lest we fall back into some form of magic. This is often the case though, and not just in pagan systems, but also in some parts of Christianity. But that would be one more adventure in missing the point. We can use the language of the world (insofar we decipher it) to be able to understand and master nature, but we can only learn to speak the language of God (or the tao, or the order of the universe, depending on your tradition) in order to align ourselves more with Him. But we can’t put the Source of Being in our pocket or use it as a pet hawk to catch the hare we want to eat for Christmas…

In the end we are part of a bigger whole. We humans are not to be masters of the universe. We are almost gods maybe (see psalm 8 in the bible), but we never will be gods. We didn’t make this place, and didn’t invent the rules that were written in all of creation…

So we can try to learn to understand the language of the universe (in part, and in our fallible human way) but we will never be God, never be the Source of being, and in the end we will always be answerable to the Ultimate Source of Being.

(And as a Christian I must add that, while it is impossible for a human to really learn ‘the language of God’, it actually works the other way. God came down and learnt to speak our language, and became human in the person of Jesus. This is the opposite of all our power games. God did not come to make us submit in that way of power, He came as we are. See also this post)